Sameer Allawadi, Founder at Utkarsh Agrochem Pvt Ltd

Great Companies: How did you get your idea or concept for the business?

Sameer Allawadi : When I was doing my post-graduation in Entrepreneurship in 1998, we have to make a project that we want to do after completing education. Being Chemical engineer, I first choose Chemical and dyes. When I survey, I realized that 50% units in GIDC were closed due to pollution norms or dumping from China. Second choice to apply my engineering skill was Food processing industry. When I went in depth, I realized developed countries are not importing much material from India as organically grown farm produce was not available. At that time, domestic market for food processing was not developed much. So, I decided that I will play instrumental work in growing organic food. Now I need to start from somewhere. After studying organic farming, I realized that organic manure is the foundation of organic farming. So, I took the project of Manufacturing and marketing of Organic Manure. After completing education, I joined a company as sales officer. This company helped me a lot in making my project. Here my journey with farmers of South Gujarat started and within 3 months, I started my own trading of organic manure as a dealer. Later we took dealership of many companies and then started own manufacturing.

Great Companies: What are the various Services provided by Utkarsh Agrochem Pvt Ltd

Sameer Allawadi : We sell more than 130 non-poisonous products that are used for agriculture, horticulture, organic farming, aquarium plants, hydroponics etc.

• We do online and offline consultation.

• We make sowing till harvesting videos of all important crops in India and provide them on our YouTube channel.

• We conduct training workshops for farmers.

• We do white labelling of our products for many companies.

• We make customized products for companies as per their requirements.

• We export our products.

Great Companies: What makes Utkarsh Agrochem Pvt Ltd different from hundreds of other similar manufacturing and trading firms?

Sameer Allawadi :

We have good range of fertilizers that are result oriented, rightly priced, available on more than 7 portals so anyone in India can easily buy them. Also, we educate our customers and provide customized solution after visiting their farms or seeing photos and videos and understanding their problem. We also provide free training of more than 20 crops through our videos, SOPs, online support etc.

Great Companies: What are the struggles and challenges you face?

Sameer Allawadi : I started with 0 zero capital. So first struggle was to create seed capital. Worked from home for first one and half. Started own office in 2001. Started own factory of organic manure manufacturing in 2003 but stopped it due to lack of working capital. Opened Surat’s first and 2nd organic food outlet in 2004 and 2007 but failed both times. In 2010, I was completely debt ridden. It took 2 years to bounce back. Started manufacturing on big scale in 2018 but selected wrong key persons. Here again lost majority of working capital.

Great Companies: How do you plan to grow in the future? What does 5 years down the line look like for Utkarsh Agrochem Pvt Ltd?

Sameer Allawadi : Exports, Dealer’s Network, Online sales, giving franchise and working with corporates. In next 5 years, Utkarsh AGROCHEM will be a leading solution provider to farmers and farming community in India and more than 30 countries of world.

Great Companies: If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be?

Sameer Allawadi : Be confident, have persistence and accept change easily. Success will be yours.

Website : www.utkarshagro.com